Joe Di Maulo
Joseph "Joe" Di Maulo (1940s-2012) was born in the early 1940s and rose to the top of Montreal's Italian Mafia with unprecedented speed. He first came to police attention in September 1960 when he was arrested with Frank Cotroni and Michel "The Penguin" Di Paolo in possession of restricted firearms. He was involved in the organization's battle with French-Canadian gangster Richard "Le Chat" Blass and his small band of followers. One day in October 1968, Di Maulo and Claude Faber, Francesco "The Big Guy" Cotroni's brother-in-law, opened fire on Blass as he and Claude Ménard drove into a Saint-Michel garage. Blass was shot once in the back of the head and twice in the back. Blass survived but refused to identify his attackers to police. Montreal Mafia On March 12, 1971, at the age of 28, Di Maulo was charged in a triple homicide at the popular night club he owned, La Casa Loma. André Vaillancourt, the club's director of personnel, Jacques Verrier, and Jean-Claude Rioux were murdered and police arrested Di Maulo, Julio Ciamarro, Joseph Tozzi, and Jean-Marc Morin in connection with the brutal killings. In November 1971, after a twelve week trail, the three accused were found guilty of first-degree murder. The men appealed the jury's decision and, on February 1, 1973, Di Maulo, Ciamarro, and Tozzi were acquitted. In a seperate trail, Jean-Marc Morin wass also cleared of the murders. Joe Di Maulo was moving up in the organization. On November 11, 1973, he and his brother-in-law Raynald Desjardins accompanied Paolo Violi to New York City to participate in the election of Philip Rastelli as the new boss of the Bonanno crime family. With Frank Cotroni behind bars in Lewisburg in the late seventies for drug trafficking, tensions arose between Di Maulo and Cotroni's brother-in-law Claude Faber concerning the control of Local 31 of The Hotel and Restaurant Workers' Union situated in downtown Montreal. Cotroni eventually settled the quarrel, from prison, through numerous telephone calls with his principal lieutenants. The Montreal newspaper La Presse reported in 1993 that Di Maulo and Vito Rizzuto, the leader of the family, were trying to liquidate $3 billion worth of gold belonging to the late Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who died in 1989. Di Maulo was arrested along with Valentino Morielli, Fernando De Francesco, Richardo Di Massimo, and Micheline Kemp on August 17, 1995 on charges of offering an RCMP officer $100,000 to destroy evidence against Joe' brother, Vincenzo, who faced a lengthy sentence stemming from a cocaine-smuggling and money-laundering operation. But the RCMP was forced to released Di Maulo and Morielli for lack of evidence. The Montreal mobster mocked law enforcement when he told reporters "Two (days) in jail, in a 10 foot by 40 foot cell, it wasn't pleasant but I love to follow the law." Police pulled over Di Maulo as he drove down Montreal's St. Lawrence Boulevard on September 22, 1998. The agents suspected the automobile was stolen (it wasn't) and, as they questioned him, smelled alcohol on his breath. But Di Maulo refused to take a breathalyzer and he was charged with driving while under the influence. Judge Pierre Gaston acquitted Di Maulo of the charge on in April 2001. On November 4, 2012 Joseph Di Maulo was executed outside his Montreal home. Category:Rizzuto crime family Category:Canadian Mobsters Category:Murdered Mobsters